DtC Newsletter: Thoughts on the teacher and preacher

If you want a revival do the opposite of what you have been doing.

Do the opposite.

Humanists are attracted to the civil government school system because it is – and always was, even if only incrementally – not grounded in Jesus. So there may have always been Christians operating in the civil government schools, but they were always wandering outside the realm of where discipleship should occur: the home and church. Christians still choose to operate in the civil government schools; some are young people, taught in Christian universities, by professors who themselves wandered outside the realm where discipleship should occur, teaching the next generation to do the same thing. Which is: go into the civil realm and merely juxtapose Jesus with every other view, and consider that sufficient. But to juxtapose Jesus is to demote him from absolute to average; it is relativism.

Note the fact that the civil government school system is legally prohibited, under the Supreme Court of the United States’ Establishment Clause jurisprudence, from exalting Jesus. This is not a coincidence; nor was it merely inevitable; it was God-ordained, as the civil government has no right to use force and coercion to advance even Christianity.[1] The Establishment Clause is not about a supposed secular/religious distinction; rather, it is about a truly Libertarian (and therefore narrow) Romans 13 view. The civil government has no jurisdiction over thought and they have no right to be the redistributor of wealth. If you think otherwise you may be secular, but you are still religious. There is no secular/religious distinction; there is only obedience and disobedience.

Anyway, here now we have circularity: the young Christian is baited into an “education” career, just as he or she is baited into a “missions” career. (As if we need more Youth Pastors.) In many cases there is then the implicit attraction and convenience of advancing the fact that Jesus is the Savior; left out is how Jesus is Lord over all. The latter is just another way of saying that we must apply biblical principles to all areas of life, which is the very thing that precludes the existence of a civil government school system. A Christian aspiring to being a civil government school teacher is romantic, but it is not fulfilling the Great Commission, as it omits external obedience to Jesus’ lordship. And it is the very thing that has demoted America from a City on a Hill to a crumbling moral mess. It is because of Christians, not humanists.

Ideas about education relative to culture are not irrelevant abstracts. They are intangible, but they are not hypothetical or theoretical. The main idea to grasp here is that on a somewhat deep level there is definitely circularity that affects culture. The circularity is between juxtaposing Jesus and its consequence, which is that the students exposed to that relativism went out and became voters. They voted for policies other than those reflecting Jesus’ lordship. Some of those voters, regenerated, saw how the policies voted for led the culture in the wrong direction, and so they figured they would fix culture by reinfusing Jesus into civil government schools. (An absolute irony in that those same people rail against the Theonomist for supposedly evangelizing by the sword.) But at the same time, non-Christians (being more obedient to their ultimate authority than the Christians) brought the system further to the left, replacing Jesus juxtaposed with Jesus the bigot. The students exposed to Jesus the bigot went out and became voters. They voted for anti-Christian policies and made certain church denominations, the Republican Party, and colleges humanistic. Over the last two hundred years, at the beginning of and through the development of the civil government school system, humanists have obediently moved left. The Christians – and this is the major mistake – moved left too. They first adopted the false premise that there should be civil government schools; then, over time, they demoted Jesus from absolute to average. Somehow that passes as fulfilling the Great Commission.

At the end of the day the (Christian) academics deserve much of the blame for what has happened to our culture. They have gotten so thick-headed that their theology is theory; but while theology can be complex, God does not make it so complicated that the (Christian) simpleton and the (Christian) intellectual will arrive at different conclusions. That explains why the rural farmer can be so succinctly profound. This will sound anecdotal but I think it is now so obvious to me that I suggest you accept it is as empirical: those Christians who privately educate their children and who are not in leadership positions generally agree we need to eliminate civil government schools. They do not always agree on the reason why, but generally they think there should not be civil government schools. But it is the Christian leaders who do not want to touch the abolition issue.

Our Christian leaders deserve blame. They themselves were escorted through the civil government school system, were taught (of course impliedly) never to question the idea of autonomy (which has eroded the rule of law) or exaltation of man (which demotes every other man to his servant). Our Christian leaders – mainly the preacher – never consider, even using Scripture they claim is the final word on all matters, that there is another way. That other way is that God is the source of law and that man, including via civil government, is his servant.

So my advice to you is do the opposite of what your Christian leader has told you and what you feel inclined to do: If you send your child to a civil government school, do the opposite. If you do not debate the existence of civil government schools, do the opposite. If you avoid divisiveness (which is synonymous with demoting Christianity to its lowest common denominator), do the opposite.

[1] This statement is not inconsistent with Theonomy. The civil government’s application of the case laws is justifiably forcible and coercive.